Wednesday, January 06, 2010

With hundreds of thousands of seasonal flu-related complications, more than 35,000 deaths from the flu, and countless more from the H1N1 flu expected this season, ANH-USA asks the obvious question: What are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Health and Human Services (HHS) doing about it? The answer: Not much!

Our goal is to persuade the CDC, FDA, NIH, and HHS to step up to the plate and help educate the public about the critical role Vitamin D plays in preventing and treating the seasonal and H1N1 flus along with many other health problems. In particular, we are asking the CDC, FDA, HHS, and NIH to issue statements outlining the immense benefits to be gained from supplementation during the flu season. In addition, HHS should update the government’s web site, http://www.flu.gov/ to include well established facts about Vitamin D.

Studies show that least one-third of Americans are wholly deficient in Vitamin D. We all need to maintain adequate levels of Vitamin D year-round, not just during flu season. The government has an important role to play in getting this message out, but says nothing at all.

In anticipation of the government’s programmed response – that even more research needs to be done – we are also asking the CDC, FDA, NIH, and HHS to support and fund additional research on the importance of maintaining adequate levels of Vitamin D, including the link between Vitamin D and flu prevention and treatment.

Why is the government utterly silent about Vitamin D and its benefits? Could it be because big corporations are not pushing such an inexpensive and readily available form of prevention and treatment? Whatever the reason, the government’s silence is shameful. Please sign our petition to these agencies now. Take Action Here

Vitamin D: The Super Supplement

Vitamin D is safe and effective for the prevention and treatment of seasonal and H1N1 flus. The scientific research is clear. Yet CDC, FDA, NIH, and HHS continue to tow the vaccine only line, working in close partnership with vaccine manufacturers who will make billions of dollars and who have been shielded from any liability by Congress.

This obsession with a vaccine approach makes little sense given the lack of time to test the vaccine for safety and efficacy and the challenge of producing enough vaccine on time. It makes even less sense when there are natural ways to prevent and treat the illness that have been thoroughly validated by science.

We are all familiar with the adaptive immune response. Our bodies mount a defense against a new invader and then maintain antibodies against future attacks by the same invader. This is exactly how vaccines are meant to work. But for such an immune response to work, your own immune system has to be primed and ready to do its job. Good nutrition is critical for this. Vitamin D is especially critical. Your immune system will not work without it.

Common sense tells us that what we eat will strengthen or weaken our immune systems. For some of the science behind this, see an article by Laura Landro, published in the November 24, 2009, issue of the Wall Street Journal. But even the best diet will not give us the amount of Vitamin D needed for the immune system to reach its full potential.

What Exactly Does Vitamin D Do?

When Vitamin D is lacking, we become a prime target for flu and the H1N1 Swine Flu. By contrast, those with sufficient levels of Vitamin D are able to fight off or throw off these attacking pathogens. Vitamin D boosts the innate immune response in many ways, but in particular by turning on an antimicrobial protein.

Our vitamin-D mediated immune response has been with us through more than 60 million years of pre-human and human evolutionary selection. It must be critical to our survival, according to researchers at Ohio State University .

Flu is at least in part a Vitamin D deficiency disease. But the benefits of this wonder supplement go far beyond the flu. As John Cannell, MD, founder of the non-profit Vitamin D Counsel, has noted: “Current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more.” We join the Vitamin D Council in urging our government to break its silence about this wonder supplement.

Will the Government Act Before Countless More Suffer Needlessly?

Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, complained for years that the FDA dragged its feet and ignored the science about the need for folic acid supplementation to prevent neural tube birth defects in newborns. Under fierce pressure, the FDA finally admitted the truth and such defects were reduced. Now the FDA is again refusing to tell the American people about another supplement which can save lives, this time in a flu pandemic, but also in reducing heart disease and cancer and other life destroying conditions.

The government has created a web site (www.flu.gov) expressly dedicated to educating the public about flu, including Swine Flu. This site however says nothing about natural forms of prevention and treatment, including even Vitamin D.

We are now asking the CDC, FDA, NIH, and HHS to tell the truth about the immense benefits to be gained from Vitamin D supplementation during the flu season and year round. We are also requesting that HHS update the government’s web site, www.flu.gov to include the incontestable scientific research behind Vitamin D.

There are reliable scientific studies showing a positive correlation between Vitamin D and a decrease in flu occurrence and complications. There is good science explaining this correlation. If the government nevertheless believes more studies are in order, we request that the government sponsor and pay for more trials.

What Can Be Done this Flu Season?
As Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation has pointed out, many doctors are not trained to recognize a Vitamin D deficiency until rickets develop in children or osteomalacia (softening of the bones) develops in adults . Even so, many doctors are now urging their patients to supplement with Vitamin D.

Whether your doctor is up to date or not, you should take the initiative. Have your Vitamin D level checked. If you are below an optimum Vitamin D level, take a supplement. Changing your diet alone cannot create optimal Vitamin D levels. Only supplementation or sufficient exposure to the sun (without sun block and when the sun’s rays are sufficiently strong) can do that.

The blood work that checks Vitamin D status is called the 25, hydroxy vitamin D test. Some experts are satisfied with a minimum reading of 30 ng/ml, but it is doubtful that this is high enough to make your immune system work at optimal levels. While a level of 30 ng/ml defines the bottom of the normal range, Integrative doctors often like to see levels of 70 or 80 (but no higher than 100) ng/ml. Use of the blood test is the best way to prevent over-dosing.

Seniors are especially apt to be vitamin D deficient and have been found to be less likely to succumb to all causes of mortality when they have optimal levels of vitamin D. Young people are also often deficient even though Vitamin D is essential as the body grows and matures.

The most recent Harvard Heart Letter confirms that at least one-third of Americans of all ages are Vitamin D deficient. “Deficient” in this instance was defined as less than 20 ng/ml of 25-hydroxy vitamin D. The Harvard letter stated that supplements are the simplest and safest way to get vitamin D and recommended 800 to 1,000 IU from supplements as a daily goal. The Vitamin D Council recommends 5,000 IU daily, but in conjunction with blood testing. The U.S. government claims to be highly concerned about Swine flu and the general health of the American public, but does not even recommend 800 IU. For the most part, it says nothing.

Imagine for a moment that a drug company announced the development of a new drug matching the preventive and curative properties of Vitamin D. Does anyone think the government would remain silent about such a new drug? Of course not. The government would promote the use of the new wonder drug.

This is a scandal. Please join us in asking the government to do its duty to the American people by telling the truth about Vitamin D for flu and for general health. Take Action Here

For more on the extensive science behind Vitamin D, please click here .

For additional discussion on Vitamin D, see any of the following:

Dr. Mercola provides a lecture covering resources, research, and recommendations on Vitamin D in addition to many other articles.

Natural News provides links to more than 200 featured Vitamin D articles.

Life Extension Magazine also provides additional important articles (shown below), covering the critical role of Vitamin D and an assessment of just how Vitamin D deficient we all probably are.

Bill Faloon, Co-founder of Life Extension Foundation, recently summarized some of the science showing the critical role of Vitamin D in preventing and controlling infections due to the flu. An excerpt from his article in the January 2010 Life Extension Magazine follows:

Evidence that Vitamin D Combats Winter Infections

As daylight hours grow colder and shorter, incidences of the common cold, flu, and respiratory infections spike upwards. Scientists have identified reduced vitamin D levels in winter months as a prime suspect for this increase in infectious disease cases.

Vitamin D in all forms (sunlight, sun lamps, or supplements) reduces the incidence of respiratory infections.[24,26] Dutch children with the least sun exposure are twice as likely to develop a cough and three times more likely to develop a runny nose compared with children with the most sun exposure.[35]

When Russian athletes were given access to a sun lamp to stimulate vitamin D synthesis in the body, there were 50% fewer respiratory infections and 300% fewer days of absence.[26]

Children with the lowest vitamin D serum levels are 11 times more likely to develop respiratory infection. When 60,000 IU per week of vitamin D was administered (for six weeks) to children with frequent respiratory infections, the result was a complete disappearance of such infections in the following six months.[36]

In a controlled trial of African women, a low dose (800 IU a day) of vitamin D resulted in a 3-fold reduction in cold and flu symptoms compared to those given placebo.[37]

Flu viruses (including swine flu) induce a massive inflammatory response that can kill the victim. In other words, it is not the virus that often kills, but the body’s hyper-reaction to the virus—in the form of uncontrolled over-production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Vitamin D down-regulates the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha. [39]

As people age, they often over-express these same destructive pro-inflammatory cytokines. The result is chronic low-level inflammation that damages aging arteries, joints, and neurons[40-44]. By down-regulating excess pro-inflammatory cytokine production, vitamin D could save the lives of those stricken with acute influenza, or the dozens of inflammatory diseases that afflict millions of aging Americans each year.

Antimicrobial peptides are components of the immune system that protect against bacterial, fungal and viral infections. Secreted by immune cells throughout the body, antimicrobial peptides damage the outer lipid membrane of infectious agents (including influenza viruses), rending them vulnerable to eradication.

Recent studies confirm that vitamin D dramatically up-regulates the expression of these antimicrobial peptides in immune cells[45]. We now have a definitive biological mechanism to explain why vitamin D confers such dramatic protection against common winter illnesses.

What are minimum vitamin D blood levels?

When blood is tested to assess vitamin D status, what is actually measured is the metabolically active 25-hydroxyvitamin D form of the vitamin in the serum.

42. Licinio J, Wong ML. The role of inflammatory mediators in the biology of major depression: central nervous system cytokines modulate the biological substrate of depressive symptoms, regulate stress-responsive systems, and contribute to neurotoxicity and neuroprotection. Mol Psychiatry. 1999 Jul;4(4):317-27.